TWE Travel Spotlight: An Escape to Provence for R&R and Rejuvenation

Where does a world traveler go when she wants a little downtime to rejuvenate?

I found out on a retreat to the south of France with National Geographic Photographer Catherine Karnow. I learned about the retreat when I interviewed Catherine for The Women’s Eye Podcast, where we talked about how transformational photography can be.

After having poured time and energy into her recent workshops, Catherine was ready for a little R&R herself. So in her inimitable style, Catherine actually created the retreat she wanted to participate in.

She took a small group of US and UK travelers including me to the village of Seillans—officially designated as one of France’s “most beautiful villages”—for ten glorious days in Provence.

Catherine had arranged for a gourmet chef, daily yoga classes, a French organic cooking class, museum tours, excursions to scenic hillside villages (a view of Mons is above), sailing along the Cote d’Azure, visits with artists and winemakers, hiking, exploring markets, and of course, plenty of opportunities for photography.

One of my favorite parts of the retreat was the opportunity to visit Provence’s art museums. Catherine’s friend, the esteemed art historian Michel Remy, provided insight into both art and artist at the Matisse Museum and below at a Raoul Dufy exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nice. I especially liked his descriptions of Matisse and Picasso’s friendly rivalry, which I never heard about in art class.

The annual Rose Festival in La Colle-sur-Loup has been enticing visitors with festivities and fun since 1954. Here, amid a crowd of jugglers, stilt-walkers, musicians, food vendors, perfumers, flower-sellers, and a parade of rose-festooned mini cars, members of a local dance club show off their stuff. Lots of attendees were dressed in pink for the occasion, and we had great fun photographing the crowd.

Another excursion was to the village of Tourrettes, home to many artists whose ateliers—or studios—are open year-round to visitors. Claudia Wypych was kind enough to give us a demonstration of her unusual technique, which involves making all her own pigments by hand-grinding earth and stones, then carefully sprinkling the dusty colors onto a sticky canvas. Some of her work is visible in the background below. Her results were so beautiful that I briefly considered changing careers.

Rose grower Amandine Barbero showed us around the Clos des Roses estate in Fayence, which has been in her family for six generations. We walked through a rose field, enveloped in a light, fruity fragrance, as Amandine showed us how rose harvesters snap off the blossoms (it’s all in the wrist).

A huge number of roses are required to make perfume: One person can harvest about 2,000 roses (or 5 kilos) in a day; it takes 120 times that much (600 kilos) to produce the 100 kilos of rose paste that are needed for just half a liter of rose essence. The roses grown here are used to make Chanel No. 5 perfume.

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No trip to Provence would be complete without a visit to a winery, and I enjoyed every minute at Val d’Iris. The estate sits in a pretty little valley with stone and clay soil; great swaths of iris and wildflowers surround the vineyards.

After a visit to the barrel room, where we admired the combination of traditional stoneware jars for maturing red wines and modern stainless steel tanks for whites and rosés, we relaxed and sipped wine at the edge of a meadow where we listened to birdsong and laughed at the antics of playful lambs. That’s got to be the very definition of idyllic.

While I could (possibly) have organized a similar trip myself, it was much more enjoyable to let an expert manage all the planning and logistics so I could relax, participate fully, and make new friends.

Catherine’s lifetime of traveling has given her connections with remarkable people I would never have met on my own, and her sense of fun and adventure made this one of the best trips ever.

Photography by Laurie McAndish King

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